Pop Quiz!

Which of the following buildings is NOT a modern art museum? No cheating with Google images either.

Jeremy Clarkson would say, "No. You're wrong." The first one is the Museum Tinguely devoted to a guy who made awesome mechanical sculptures. The second is a building, designed by the same architect actually, originally for the Swiss bank UBS and now used by the Bank of International Settlements. The third is the Contemporary Art Museum in Basel. The fourth belongs to the Fondation Beyeler (designed by Renzo Piano, the man responsible for the Menil in Houston).

Basel is a town that is serious about it's architecture, which makes it even more of a shame that I couldn't afford any of their freaking museums (including the, well the architecture museum). Museums like this one:  

That's the Schaulager. It was designed by Basel superstar architects Herzog and de Meuron, who are most famous internationally for the Bird's Nest, the Olympic stadium used in Beijing. Fans of the beautiful game may also recognize some of their other work.

The Schaulager is located in a place called Dreispitz. All of the local tourist information says so. What they do not say is that Dreispitz is a 150 acre industrial park that you can't walk through and the tram stop called Dreispitz is on one end, while the Schaulager is on the other. It's a good thing that I enjoy walking or I might be bitter about the experience.

As I tricked you into noticing, everyone gets in on the modern architecture act in Basel or will be, not just the cool museums. Even Novartis, the pharmaceutical giant will be getting a new ultra-modern look after they are done tearing down their old industrial park.

I could have watched that crane tear down that building all day. It was the only thing a member of the public could do around the Novartis campus anyway, which is why there are no pictures of the rest of it.

I would have taken pictures of Frank Gehry's Vitra Design building, but I had already walked 6 or so km that day and needed to walk 6 more to get back to Basel since I was fairly deep into Germany at that point for a pedestrian. By the time I would have reached the Vitra, it would have been closed anyway.

The shame of all this ultra-modern architecture for me was that, unlike Berlin, I didn't know how to read the buildings, to understand their purpose and their place. The Fondation Beyeler is in Riehen, far away from Basel's city center. Vitra is in Germany as I mentioned. The bank buildings locations make sense - the one from Botta is located on one of the main squares in Basel, called Aeschenplatz and the other building, which actually the main building is across the trams from the main train station. It's also across the street from a five star Hilton. And it looks much cooler:

I guess my quest to experience the architecture of Basel without a proper guide was about the same as taking pictures of their beautiful mountain landscapes: I don't have any idea what it meant, I just liked the view. I like to understand the world around me a little more than that, but finding beautiful views was a great way to spend a week in Basel anyway.